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I had a completely different blog started about fall paintings, but a plein air adventure this fall took this in a different direction.

I always take a week off from work in late October to do plein air painting of the fall colors. At this time of year, they're near or at peak color in metro Detroit. Here's six of them I did in the past couple weeks.

There's one plein air I did that's not included in the batch above, and that's where our story comes in. 

The weather forecasters predicted a week filled with rain. Luckily, they were wrong for the most part and Wednesday was my only washout day. Although the rain had moved out, Thursday was a chilly and windy day. I had special plans for it, though. Inspired by artist Michael Chamberlain, I packed an old plein air painting I did on a nice 20" x 20" gallery-wrapped canvas that I want to paint over. To accommodate this larger sized surface, I also packed my Take-It-Easel as well as the Shamrock Palette I had made to fit it. 

I did the plein air painting called Fall Day at Winter Grove (shown above) in Stoney Creek Metropark on Monday and was eager to return to do more plein air painting in this large Metropark. The trees were mostly at peak color and there were plenty of nice spots throughout the park to paint. For Thursday's paint session, I ended up at Eastwood Beach. I knew I wanted to do a scene along Stony Creek Lake and include the surrounding hills filled with beautifully-colored leaves. The sky was filled with moody, dark gray clouds that broke up a little in places so the. sun could shine spots of sunlight on the hills. The lake was active with lots of waves due to the constant wind. My foreground also had wonderful dead brush to add some warm color to the foreground. I knew immediately that I wanted the whole painting in shade except for the hill in front of me, which I would have spotlit by the sun. It was the perfect focal point, as well as a wonderful reminder of the dramatic lighting I kept seeing throughout my paint day.

As I scouted the area for just the right vantage point, I was glad I dressed for a winter day. It was chilly and very windy. I was also glad I brought my Take-It-Easel. This is a Gloucester-style easel that can accommodate larger canvasses and it one of the sturdiest easels to use. It was designed to withstand the strong winds on the New England Coast. This easel should surely be able to handle any winds coming from the north at Stoney Creek Metropark. 

Or so I thought.

The easel took a little longer to put together than my usual panel holder set-up. It was bigger and had more parts to configure. I found a great spot behind a small boat rental building closed for the season. Ii had a great view of the hills to the north. With the task of getting the easel and palette ready out f the way, it's time to start getting to the painting itself.

All of a sudden, the wind picked and toppled my easel with the palette and canvas over!

My instant reaction was to blurt out a few NSFW words. Luckily, it happened before I squeezed any paint out and I was happy nothing had broken. Still, I no longer trusted my set-up and had to come up with a new plan.

The solution ended up being quite simple and quick. Instead of setting up at the rear of the boat storage, I move it to its south side, which blocked most of the wind.

I also played it safe and secured the easel by adding some weight to its rear in the form of my REI backpack. This contained some unused plein air supplies, including the metal-based panel holder I usually use. I also attached my tripod weight stabilizer to the center of the easel with some unused paint tubes placed in it for weight. 

This solution worked perfectly for this painting session. The easel stayed put and the canvas didn't act like a sail to drag the set up down. Of course, I still found myself chasing a couple trash bags that the wind started carrying away. Makes me wonder how those great artists like Emile Gruppé painted with these types of easels with the windier conditions they have on the New England Coast to deal with.

Because the day was mostly overcast and gray and even the sunlit areas didn't have color that was too saturated, I limited my palette more than usual. I normally use a split-primary palette (a warm and cool version of each primary, plus Burnt Sienna to make blacks with my Ultramarine Blue as well as Titanium White). This time I did have a warm and cool version of blue (Ultra fine Blue and Cerulean Blue Hue), but only use Permanent Rose for my red and Cadmium Yellow Hue for the yellow. I also kept my Burnt Sienna and Titanium White, but added some Viridian Green to the palette. You can see my palette on the photo below on the left.

The photo below on the right shows my canvas ready to get painted on. The painting on it already is a plein air I don't remember doing. I didn't care for it so I sanded it down to smooth the surface. My first step would be to get a simple drawing on it and then covering the old painting with a quick block in.

I had the sketch and block in finished in just a few minutes. The block in stage is one of my favorite parts of plein air painting. This is when I can play around with the composition and change things around easily. For instance, I found myself changing the height of the horizon line ands shrinking the height of the sunlit hill. Once I get involved with painting more of the details, it's difficult to make composition changes.

To keep it looking fresh, I thinned the paint with a little Liquin. This painting medium makes it easier to brush it all over the surface. It also will make this layer quicker to dry.

After I have my scene blocked in to my satisfaction, I use my paint without any medium. I tried not to get caught up in the details. I was having so much fun with my large brush, I kept using it for pretty much the rest of the painting. I applied my brushstrokes more carefully to establish forms and let the brushstrokes show. I'm the type of painter who likes to show the marks made to proudly state it was done by an artist and didn't just appear on the canvas magically.

To my surprise and delight, I completed this larger 20" x 10" surface in about 2 hours — pretty much the same amount of time for my regular sized plein air surfaces of 11" x 14". I think I retained the freshness of the scene. I have it hanging in our house and I see some things I would like to change, but, for the most part, I'm pretty happy with the result. I'm going to keep it just as I finished it. I almost never touch a plein air painting once I leave the scene, aside from small touchups on areas that might have gotten mussed during its transport.

So, here's what it ended up looking like...

This is a 20" x 20" oil on a gallery-wrapped canvas. I titled this Empyrean Spotlight. The reason I chose to paint this scene was the touch of sunlight on the distant hills, which glowed with the colors of the different foliage of the trees that covered them. The glow was emphasized more by everything else in the scene being in shade. It was like a spotlight from God.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. I t started with a mishap and plein air painters have all kinds of stories of the mishaps we encounter. We've all had the wet painting that falls off the easel and lands in the dirt or grass paint-side down. We've had bugs fly into our wet painting and get stuck. (A painting by Van Gogh still has a grasshopper embedded in the paint over a century later!) We've been rained on and gotten frostbite. And yet, we still recover from lost of the mishaps and rescue the painting in the end. It's still my favorite way to paint.

Now there's still lots of leaves on the trees in my neighborhood. I can't wait until I have some more free time to paint some more fall scenes this year while I can.